Margaret Mead Quotes

Jealousy is not a barometer by which the depth of love can be read. It merely records the degree of the lover's insecurity.

Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual.

To demand that another love what one loves is tyranny enough, but to demand that another hate what one hates, is even worse.

Manners, really good ones, make it possible to live with almost anyone, gracefully and pleasantly.

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.

Motherhood is a biological fact, while fatherhood is a social invention.

human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight.

Any town that doesn't have sidewalks doesn't love its children.

The important thing about women today is, as they get older, they still keep house. It's one reason why they don't die, but men die when they retire. Women just polish the teacups.

It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.

I have a respect for manners as such, they are a way of dealing with people you don't agree with or like.

‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.

We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.

If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

Dear Math, please grow up and solve your own problems. I'm tired of solving them for you. Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

Even though the ship may go down, the journey goes on.

Somehow, we have to get older people back close to growing children if we are to restore a sense of community, acquire knowledge of the past, and provide a sense of the future.

You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don't like.

Children not only have to learn what their parents learned in school, but also have to learn how to learn. This has to be recognized as a new problem which is only partly solved.

Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.

We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.

Creationism: the theory that Rome was built in a day.

Because of their age long training in human relations for that is what feminine intuition really is women have a special contribution to make any group enterprise.

Women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.

There is no greater insight into the future than recognizing...when we save our children, we save ourselves

As long as any adult thinks that he, like the parents and teachers of old, can become introspective, invoking his own youth to understand the youth before him, he is lost.

It was not until we saw the picture of the earth, from the moon, that we realized how small and how helpless this planet is - something that we must hold in our arms and care for.

Blackberry winter, the time when the hoarforst lies on the blackberry blossoms; without this frost the berries will not set. It is the forerunner of a rich harvest.

Earth Day is the first holy day...and is devoted to the harmony of nature... The celebration offends no historical calendar, yet it transcends them all.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as - carried too far - one of its weaknesses.

Throughout history, females have picked providers for males. Males pick anything.

Grandparents are given a second chance to enjoy parenthood with fewer of its tribulations and anxieties.

The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one's mind.

Having two bathrooms ruined the capacity to co-operate.

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.

The closest friends I made all through life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother or grandfather.

Each suburban housewife spends her time presiding over a power plant sufficient to have staffed the palace of a Roman emperor with a hundred slaves.

For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.

Fathers are biological necessities, but social accidents.

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

You know you love someone when you cannot put into words how they make you feel.

in all cultures, human beings - in order to be human - must understand the nonhuman.

The atmosphere is the key symbol of global interdependence.

Contentment can be bought at a price that one can not possibly pay.

One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it.

Monogamous heterosexual love is probably one of the most difficult, complex and demanding of human relationships.

You can no longer save your family, tribe or nation. You can only save the whole world.

The prophet who fails to present a bearable alternative and yet preaches doom is part of the trap that he postulates.

Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.